Houseguests
by Whelpie
Summary: A man visits a haunted house in London to find the truth behind the myth.


One summer, I was to visit London. I had arranged with the owners that I would spend a night in a famous haunted house – not normally open to tourists, but a friend's uncle had known the owner, and was able to secure me the visit. I was quite excited. The building, known as Whateley House, had several floors and many rooms, but the hauntings were limited to one room in particular. It was said that several people had died there, their mangled corpses found by the janitor in the morning, since at least the 18th century. The killings had not been common occurrences, which is why it took so long for the room to be closed off, but in the seventies, it had been passed over to the current owner, who had used the downstairs part of the house to establish a store, while the room on the second floor was entirely closed off. The rest of the floor was used for storage, but that one room in particular was closed due to the hauntings. Indeed, the house had attracted quite the reputation and was famous for its ghost, causing many tourists to visit every year. But the room remained closed off despite this, with no one allowed inside. Well, until me, of course.

The history of the house did nothing to suggest why this sort of thing would have started happening. Before the hauntings, no murders, suicides or anything of the sort had happened in the building, nothing that one would normally associate with vengeful spirits. It had simply happened that one day, someone had been killed by the ghost in the house and it had started from there. The police had been baffled. The first death was a maid working for the family in the house. When she had been found, it was reported that she had died of fright, her face frozen in a mask of horror. The only clue had been the water on the floor, and on her body. But it was a long time ago, and investigations weren't exactly thorough at the time. A local man had been tried and found guilty of the murder, and was imprisoned. And yet, the mysterious deaths had continued every few decades for a long, long time. In between these were times when the house stood unoccupied for long periods of time due to its reputation. But the property was always purchased eventually, with the occupants often spending years there before any incident. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the building looking at it from the outside – just a normal-looking London house in several floors with a simple, black-painted façade. If one was not familiar with the history of the place, they would surely just walk past it without even giving any part of it a second thought.

The first thing that struck me as odd was how, despite everything, the owner was still incredibly reluctant to let me stay. Even with me having flown over to England mainly for this, he still tried to talk me out of it. He related to me the story of a group of young sailors in the 19th century who had gotten drunk in a nearby pub when the conversation had steered towards the haunted room a few blocks down. One of them had loudly proclaimed the whole thing to be bollocks, and taken a bet to stay there overnight. The owner had agreed, but had given the young man a pistol, just in case. Around 3 AM, pistol shots were heard from the room. The owner immediately went up there, but the sailor was gone. He was later found in the basement, soaking wet and crudely dismembered. And, as the owner related to me, this was only one of several occurrences. While he doubted that anything would happen, he would still much prefer that I simply stay at a hotel. I declined, and he reluctantly insisted that I at least take a gun to defend myself like the sailor, something which I accepted, albeit with slight amusement at the fact that this older British gentleman owned a revolver.

Eventually, night fell and I began my quiet vigil. I had my camera ready and a notebook to immediately record any events that might transpire before they began fading from memory. I sat down at a small table in the middle of the room and started reading a book I had brought to entertain myself throughout the night. Slowly, the hours passed. 9 PM. 10 PM. I glanced over at the pistol that the owner had given me. It was a bit preposterous to think that a ghost might be affected by a weapon such as that, was it not? Then again, given how little is actually known about ghosts, it might not be so silly after all. Lead might not be a traditional weakness associated with ghosts, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work on them. 11 PM. A thought had started nagging at the back of my head. While the idea of the famous ghost murdering people was, of course, a bit out there, something had produced those corpses. But the main suspect was the owner of the building, the only other person with a key to the room. And not only was it a different owner now, but he had also lent me a weapon. Surely there would be no reason to fear such a thing? Probably not, but out of a sense of paranoia, I still checked the revolver. Five bullets, all in there, seemingly real bullets. I breathed a sigh of relief. The stories really were getting to me. 12 AM. I found myself starting to nod off. Even with the creepy atmosphere of the house, it was still hard not to get a bit bleary-eyed from the total lack of activity. I pulled out my thermo filled with coffee and poured myself a cup.

1 AM. The thermo was completely empty. I wish I had been a bit more preservative, but oh well. I had downed one of the two sandwiches I had brought with me, and noticed that I'd left some crumbs on the table and floor. I'd have to clean those up in the morning. 2 AM. I heard something. Immediately, my groggy self was jolted back into the real world. Clearly, the coffee hadn't been strong enough. I listened intently. A sickening, squelching sound was coming from the walls. At first, it seemed to be under the floor, but gradually it moved through the walls, making its way upward, up, until it suddenly stopped. My heart was pounding, and I put the camera in front of me, ready to film any paranormal activity that might occur. Then, a panel in the wall began shifting. As I watched, the panel was pushed out, and fell to the floor. Several agonising seconds went by, and then, then something happened. Slowly, a bizarrely segmented, thin arm started coming out of the hole, feeling around until it found the floor. Another arm appeared, reaching towards the floor, dripping water onto it and creating a small puddle beneath the missing panel. With a sucking sound, something pulled itself out of the hole in the wall, landing on the floor with a dull thud. I'm not quite sure what this creature was. Its limbs were extremely thin, and segmented strangely – it seemed to have two elbow and knee joints on each. I couldn't see a head, its body just seemed like an elongated mass.

It was only as I reached the chilling realisation that regardless of what this thing was, if something had killed the people who had lived in the room before me, this was it. As it started making its way towards me, pulling itself closer with its arms, I scrambled for the gun. The thing was faster. It leapt towards me, and managed to grab my leg. I screamed as it wrapped its tentacle around my shin with surprising strength. Even through my pants, I felt the wetness, the horrible wetness of the thing. I kicked at the hand with my free leg and eventually managed to get it to let go of me for a second. It was enough. I managed to get myself over to the table, grabbed the gun and turned towards the thing just as I felt it grabbing my other leg. As it pulled, I was knocked to the floor, and my first shot missed. I looked at the creature – an opening on its torso had appeared, round like that of a leech, teeth gnashing inside. Before I could do anything, it managed to bite my leg. I screamed and shot again, missing as it grabbed my right arm. The thing had seven claws on each hand, but they seemed boneless, nothing but pure muscle. I could feel the gun slipping from my grasp as it crushed the bone in my arm. So great was the pain that I could barely hold on. But I held on, and I managed one more shot. This one punched straight into the wet mass that constituted its body.

It let out a shriek, an inhuman sound that I couldn't possibly begin to describe. I felt its grip loosening, and thought it was over. But that was when it began hastily retreating back towards the hole in the wall, dragging me with it as it went. I roared, and with a final surge of strength, I shot the thing again. This time, it finally let me go. I watched as it slithered back into the hole, and heard its retreat through the walls, squelching as it went. My leg was useless. The ankle had been gnawed to shreds, and there was blood everywhere. I feared that I would have to make myself a tourniquet and hobble out for help, but thankfully that was not the case. Mere minutes later, as I was tying a ripped piece of my shirt around the wound, the owner arrived alongside two policemen. After I was rushed to the hospital, they reviewed the tapes. I've seen them myself. Not a lot is visible on the tape due to the camera being knocked over while we were struggling. However, the creature's emergence and the sounds it made, as well as my own screams of pain, are all plain as day on the tape. What it was that attacked me that night, no one knows. I've showed the tape to anyone who will have a look, biologists and professors and laymen all. But all have reached the same conclusion – there is simply not evidence on the tape to conclude anything. Some have even suggested that my experience was a hallucination of some sort, and that my damage was self-inflicted in a stupor.

A few months later, the building was torn down. Inside the walls, they found a system of tunnels connecting the building directly to the sewers running underneath it. The sewer contained a few remains, some human, some animal. The creature was never found – apart from this, no other signs of it appeared. For all I know, it's still down there. To me, it matters not. I have long since departed from the city of London, and I do not intend to return. Whatever it is that lives in the city sewers, whatever I saw that night, I no longer wish to know. But despite this, sometimes, sometimes I still hear the sound, the squelching sound within the walls as I am about to fall asleep, with puddles appearing on the floor in the morning. Maybe it's all in my head. But sometimes, I find myself looking at my gun, and wondering if maybe it can't take care of that problem as well.


End file.
